Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society Places Large Order for
Clarinet Systems’ ESB101 Single-Port Switches

Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, based in Sioux Falls, SD, recently placed a very large order for Clarinet Systems’ EthIR LAN ESB101 single-port wireless infrared network switches.  Good Samaritan is the largest not-for-profit provider of senior housing and services in the USA with over 240 long-term care facilities in 25 states. The initial shipment of ESB101’s will be distributed in selected Good Samaritan long-term care facilities, with ultimate potential for all of Good Samaritan’s facilities to utilize the ESB101 solution.

Good Samaritan’s facilities each have a Care Management organization, which is staffed by activity professionals charged with developing and implementing a range of activities for the facilities’ senior residents. These activities require extensive record keeping, which up to now had been done via a paper-based system that involved considerable expenditure of the activity professionals’ time, and often resulted in erroneous entries and inefficient intra-staff communications. In response to this, the Good Samaritan Society formed a cross-functional team from the Care Management and Information Technology Divisions, which devised and implemented the Activity Professional program. This program will equip activity professionals with Palm OS PDA’s that they will use with the EthIR LAN ESB101 switches to perform data synchronization with a server-based application developed in house by the Information Technology Division. The server-based application contains all of the senior resident activity records information previously maintained with the paper-base system. The use of Palm PDA’s to replace the old paper system will provide activity professionals with real-time reporting and accurate activity tracking on all senior residents.

In conjunction with the Activity Professional program’s server-based application, Afaria Software from XcelleNet, Inc. is used as a client manager for PDA’s and PC’s that connect to the Good Samaritan network. (XcelleNet, Inc. (www.xcellenet.com) is well known for its Frontline Management Software products, which enhance mobile computing solutions). When enhancements to the in-house developed server application are implemented, Afaria pushes the new version of the application to the PDA’s in the field the next time they perform an infrared sync via the EthIR LAN ESB101’s. When the PDA’s sync to the network via the ESB101’s, they are authenticated and the server then updates them with the most current version of the application.

The implementation of the Activity Professional program has resulted in activity professionals being able to perform record entry and maintenance functions in a fraction of the time that had been required with the old paper-based system. Further, record keeping errors have been considerably reduced and intra-staff communications have been greatly enhanced. The Activity Professional program has been such a success that Good Samaritan now plans to purchase a large number of additional EthIR LAN ESB101’s to launch a similar PDA-based program for the Society’s certified nursing assistants this summer.

In addition to the EthIR LAN ESB101’s small form factor and quick and simple installation and set-up, another key factor in Good Samaritan’s decision to chose the ESB101 wireless infrared network solution was the ability of the EthIR LAN technology to support wireless network access for virtually all types of Palm and PocketPC OS PDA’s. Since Good Samaritan plans to use a mix of Palm and PocketPC PDA’s in future, the EthIR LAN ESB101’s ability to function as a form-factor independent “universal cradle” for PDA network syncing was an extremely attractive feature.

This very successful series of sales to Good Samaritan is being driven by Claritus (www.claritus.com), Clarinet Systems' reseller in the mid-North region. Claritus is based in Sioux Falls, SD and has been very active in pursuing sales of Clarinet Systems' products in many applications in the mid-North region.